The audience member who jumped on stage to charge his phone at a Broadway show has finally given his reason: “Girls were calling all day. What would you do?”
Nick Silvestri, a 19-year-old student from Seaford, New York, angered audience members and actors alike by jumping on to the stage at a performance of the puppet-themed hit Hand to God, only to find out that the charger he tried to use was fake. Silvestri was in town with family, neighbors and cousins and had had a few drinks before the show.
“We were a little banged up,” he told Playbill.com.
Silvestri had tried to charge his phone before the play, he said, while eating dinner at Iron Bar on Eighth Avenue and 45th Street, but was reprimanded by the manager. When he finished dinner he had 5% battery power left.
He arrived at the play and was seated in the orchestra section when he saw the prop outlet on stage.
“I saw the outlet and ran for it,” he said. “That was the only outlet I saw, so I thought, ‘Why not?’ I was thinking that they were probably going to plug something in there on the set, and I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal if my phone was up there too.”
Silvestri, who has been nicknamed the Broadway “Juice Jackal”, was immediately reprimanded. Security guards approached, so he jumped off the stage. When he asked if he could go back and get his phone, they retrieved it for him.
Chris York, who was sitting in the mezzanine section of the Booth Theater, told the Guardian people first thought Silvestri’s stunt might be part of the show. Once it became clear it wasn’t, they started laughing and heckling him. The pre-show music was stopped and an announcement was made prohibiting audience members from charging their phones on the stage.
Silvestri returned to his seat and received a final scolding.
“The head guy came down and started yelling at me in front of my family and the whole place,” he said. “My mother kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ and they finally let us us stay and watch the play.”
@NAimprov keep it coming: I'm lovin this
— nick silvestri (@NickSilvestri2) July 9, 2015
Silvestri received numerous tweets after his name was released by Playbill.com. He was retweeting and responding to many of them.
When asked what he would say to the cast of Hand to God if he could, Silvestri didn’t seem too remorseful.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I delayed your show five minutes,” he said. “But you got a lot of attention from this, so maybe I made your show a little better [known].”
In fact, Silvestri said, when a friend first sent him a Facebook post titled “Moron jumps on stage”, he thought it was “hilarious”.
